Assuming you're not on an adblocker, what's really odd is every page has a video about the subject. Not an advert, just a video that you aren't interested in.
I don't get it. If I'm looking up a specific year in the star trek universe, say 2381, to see what happened, why would I want 14 minute video on "a history of star trek".
Then why would I want it again when I check the next year
You watch it, and Google Ads records a veeery long "user is present on website" time, which is a boost in SEO - Google ranks how long people spend on a website, hence the "trend" of endless waffling around in stuff as basic as cooking recipes, or inline videos that entice the user to spend time on the website. Even if all of it (nowadays including videos) is AI-generated slop. But if the user immediately finds the information and goes back or closes the tab, then the site will get punished for being actually efficient and useful.
Putting autoplaying videos on every page farms their view count and gets the algorithm to show it to more people, which drives ad revenue. It's quite similar to how Fextralife embeds twitch streams to farm viewer counts.
> It's quite similar to how Fextralife embeds twitch streams to farm viewer counts.
Fextralife notably stopped streaming almost a year ago after Twitch announced that embedded views would no longer be counted. The solution is in the incentive, but unfortunately on the modern internet those generally don't favor the user.
As I understand things, video ads produce more $$$ - the advertiser pays more per view, and per click; and the click-through rate is higher. I've heard claims of video ads making 5x more.
I assume the irrelevant video is included to give Fandom more video ad space to sell.
